Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

I knew there were calls for diversity in children's lit, but you always wonder as a person of color, how diverse is too diverse?

I want to be able to let people who aren't used to seeing a Santa of color say, 'Wow, there he is.' It's time for America to diversify.

I always crave to see more stories about and by people of color, particularly new work by young black writers.

I think what we need, especially in publishing, is more commissioning editors and editors who are people of colour.

'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

I've never excluded myself because of color. It's never been part of the radar, when I look at anything I do. The majority of the roles that I've played have had very little to do with being black. It doesn't matter what color you are.

For me, I actively look for projects that showcase people of color.

I grew up figure skating, and in figure skating there is only a handful of black people at the time figure skating with me.

I want all of the work that I do to have a social justice footprint attached. I want it to move the needle forward when it comes to the perception of all people, but especially people of color.

When you surround yourself with white people, you continue to hire white people, and when you make an effort to hire people of color, that does bring in different stories and different people.

As the editor at the Village Voice, I always tried to find writers of colour.

Shows like 'Empire,' 'Black-ish,' 'Scandal,' and 'How to Get Away With Murder' are expanding viewers' perspectives on what people of color can be like. They're showing more range. They're showing more diversity within diversity.

Come on, we would be foolish to say that there's never been African-American leads in some capacity, people of color in some capacity, leading shows or what have you. But it hasn't happened enough and in a manner that is an accurate reflection of the world that we live in.

The U.S. is a rainbow of people with an endless scope of stories. My hope is that writing stories about people of color will become instinctual rather than something to be pushed for.

There needs to be more film directors of colour. They bandy about the word 'diversity' a lot, but when I say 'of colour,' I mean Asian, black - I mean people of all colour. We need to have those voices given the opportunity, not told that their films will not be distributed or will not sell well abroad.

I think all races are represented in America much more than in many other places, but it's also nice to remind people about that ethnic mix. I would like to see more black models and women from different ethnic backgrounds, but I also think that when you are casting, you just choose the most beautiful girl you can find.

We need more people working in the publishing industry itself who are people of colour.

I'll be truly happy when we're not counting the number of ethnically diverse models on a fashion runway or campaign, when having a representation of the entire human race is the norm and not an exception.

There are many people of color who are very talented.

As far as diversity's concerned, there's me, there's Al Madrigal, there's Aasif Mandvi. But I'm not walking around feeling black all the time. That would stress me out.

You are responsible for the participation of all racial groups in FHA programs.

Colored people come in all colors.

It's not enough even to have one black Barbie... because black women are not a monolith.

If you look at your companies, and half of your staff are not female, and a decent percentage of them are not people of color, then you are part of the problem because you need people working for you and you need people in positions of leadership who can exercise their bias and who can exercise their perspective.

Making a movie with people of all different ethnicity, all different skin color and different backgrounds, meant that the movie can literally play all around the world. It's not just a blanket whitewash film like most Hollywood films tend to be.